Free The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

where everybody speaks the same language. Korean.

7
    The Comeback Kid
    F or most of my series of flights I sat in muted anticipation of my newfound success. I read a book, four magazines, saw three movies, and was served breakfast eleven times. On the last leg of my journey, just hours out of LAX, I took out the script I had sold. It was called Son on the Moon , and it was a thinly veiled account of my life as a shy kid with an overheated imagination, coming of age in a small midwestern town during the pre-Beatles sixties.
    I read it twice. First for pleasure and then in a defensive mode so I could fend off any arguments to change the parts I really liked. I did this with the full understanding that I was breaking a cardinal rule of show business. When I first came to Hollywood, an established writer gave me this advice:
    â€œDon’t ever fall in love with your own stuff, kid,” he said. “They’ll only break your heart.”
    As soon as I stepped off the plane and into a terminal full of my countrymen, I began to notice seismic differences. Americans looked heavier, more serious, more racially mixed, and not nearly as happy as a random crowd of Italians. Little details began to accrue, like how in Europe those luggage trolleys are free, but here they charge you a dollar and half, like, yeah, I just got off the plane after a month in Borneo, so I certainly have a pocketful of quarters.
    I caught the SuperShuttle, and the driver updated me on the weather and the Dodgers in an accent that was either Bangladeshi or Guatemalan. Sleep overcame me so suddenly, I wasn’t aware of dozing off, but I awoke with a start to cheery ranchero music on the radio as we inched along a freeway clogged with soccer-mom minivans and SUVs the size of armored personnel carriers. Through sleep-caked eyes I studied the layer of smog that constantly blankets the freeway like permafrost. It was orangish-gray, smelled of unburned Arco Supreme, and was as unlike the sfumato as cabbages are from calla lilies.
    The shuttle turned down the tree-lined street where Nancy and I had lived for the past ten years. It all looked strange and unfamiliar, as if the shadows were on the wrong side of the street and our house was now oddly inverted. I unlocked the door and disarmed the alarm. The house smelled stale and slightly metallic. I flicked on the air-conditioning and the TV, because silence gives me the creeps. I listened to our phone messages, as cool, moist air filled the house and Connie Chung interviewed a panel of women and their plastic surgeons about designer vaginas.
    It was good to be home. Seven big rooms with TVs and phones and surround sound in every one of them. A garbage disposal. A dishwasher. And a California king-sized bed, even though I was going to be in it alone.
    I picked up the phone and dialed.
    â€œPronto,” Nancy said.
    â€œDid I wake you?”
    â€œIt’s three in the afternoon.”
    â€œOh. I thought . . .” It was too complicated to explain what I thought.
    â€œHow was the trip?’
    â€œLong, but uneventful.” My eyes felt sandy. I rotated my palm in one of my eye sockets until it made a squishy sound. “How’re you doing?”
    â€œWell, the big news here is that Dino came over and managed to shut off the heater.”
    â€œBut now it’s turned cold,” I said.
    â€œIt’s still hot, but the only way he could do it was to switch off a circuit breaker, which means that the pool pump isn’t running.”
    â€œHow green is thy algae?”
    â€œNot as bad as our fungus,” Nancy said. “Cousin Faustino finally took a look and said that half our trees are infected and their olives won’t be any good.”
    â€œLand o’ Goshen, Maw, if we lose the harvest, the ranchers’ll get our land!”
    â€œI know you see this as one big joke.”
    â€œWell, the funny things is, you know how much I love America and everything